Education Technology Sector Continues Funding Boom

Investors in education technology are happy to report that they are seeing a return on their investment. The need for education technology in schools and colleges is growing almost exponentially.

According to Lauren Landry’s article for the BostInno, there are four different kinds of educational technology:

School aged education technology

Post secondary education technology

Continuing education and professional learning technology

Consumer-facing education products and programs.

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh would like to see more technology in grade schools across the city. He would like to make Boston the tech capital of the world. It looks like he may get his wish as both the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg have made huge donations to Boston-based tech education projects.

One area of the education technology sector that officials in Utah are pushing to get more in is preschool, writes Kristen Moulton of The Salt Lake Tribune. The Waterford Institute of Utah has developed a new program called UPSTART, which helps preschoolers as young as three get ready for school from a computer at home. Families with a low income are loaned computers.

Fifteen hundred children are in the UPSTART program, with that number expected to grow to 5,000 by next year. Utah has approved a further $3 million towards the program’s development. Waterford also will bring UPSTART to Utah’s rural localities, reaching around 1,700 children in 18 school districts. However, some feel that some small areas in the state of Utah are not enough and that UPSTART should be a nationwide endeavor, reports Moulton.

Several private companies have already pledged several million dollars worth of free technologies to the UPSTART program. according to Moulton, the Federal Communications Commission has decided that it will donate two billion dollars that was collected from industry surcharged into internet access in educational institutions and libraries.